More Cardology

Is cardology even a word? Ha ha! If not, I am now making it a word.  Can I do that?

So the other day  I made a bunch of watercolor backgrounds and then made a bunch of cards from those backgrounds. 

I showed you one of those other cards yesterday.

Today I am showing you a wintery card.

Not a whole lot on stamping on this piece. This graph like background is an oldie but a goodie from Hero Arts. I like how it works on the background!
My snow kind of looks like rain, but that's because I painted some snow blobs first. and then decided to shake a bunch of glitter and make them have a little more texture. Paint works great as a glue.
Plus sometimes when you watch snow fall it does look like big white blobs coming down.
I also used a little silver Distress Spray on the background, to give it more of a snowy look.
Makes me happy.
So last night I had big plans to make a little art or do a little studio cleaning. I have decided to do some reorganization so I can't find anything for awhile- ha-ha.
This all goes back to the fact that my daughter's room has been sitting basically untouched since she moved out last June. I really didn't expect her home for good, but thought she might be by some nights when her boyfriend (with whom she is living) had to work overnight. (He's an EMT and does some 24 hour shifts.) I also kept asking her to clean through some of her stuff- and that never happened-of course.
So now I am starting to clean up her room myself, and then I am going to move my books into her old room, which give me a whole new studio wall!!! Right now my books are in my studio too. I can't wait to start being able to make some use of my daughter's old room, and being able to get a little bit of new space in the play space.
I just hate having a room sitting unused in my little house.
Anyhow, now that I am way off topic...I had plans last night to be a little productive, but that didn't happen.  Reading by the fire was so much more recharging after a dark and long Monday back at work and after coming home and having to shovel 2 of snow inches off my deck. So I didn't play or clean, but maybe today.
If reading by the fire isn't more inviting that is.
HA-HA!
Make something today that makes you happy.

A New Culinary Adventure and a Christmas Card

So I went to Costco the other day and found this cookbook that looked interesting.

I am not too familiar with a lot of Lebanese and Middle eastern foods. I love falafel and hummus and I've had Lebanese food a bit (one of my childhood friends was part Lebanese), but a lot of these recipes look and sound so delicious. My plan is to start doing a bit of experimenting with some of them once we get past Thanksgiving.

I'll let you know how that goes once I start.

Also thought I'd show you this Christmas card I made awhile back.

I embossed the Christmas tree.  I think this is a fun rubber stamp from Hero Arts. The squirrels are die cuts, and I first stamped  the pink card base in black with an older Hero Arts snowflake background stamp. I wanted to just break up the solid pink of that card stock.

So I only have to work 2 days this week. Tomorrow I am off (BIG SMILE) and will also be off right through the end of the weekend. This is one of the reason's I love Thanksgiving!

I plan on doing a few little things but mostly I plan on being low key and lazy! Reading my book, making some art, watching season 2 of Last Tango in Halifax, sleeping in. I hope I can do all of those things!

If you are here in the US or celebrate Thanksgiving, what are you going to be up to?

Pausing

Another flower card today. This one was actually pretty simple but I love how it came out.  The sunset and silhouettes of the flowers. I used a slightly textured cardstock by American Crafts and black embossed flowers. Image is from Hero Arts. The textured cardstock kind of made the embossing a little bit irregular, but I like how it makes it a little bit more deilcate. The Hero Arts image is an older one but a great background stamp. I  used some SILKS paints to color the background. I painted using a wet brush so that gave me that light blush of color.

I like how that sounds. Blush of color.

Words are from Tim Holtz, Stamper's Anonymous. I think the pop of the butterfly is great.

The 2 little black butterflies are also from Hero Arts. An ancient mini-image set on peg stamps.

And how about some real garden color?

I love the flowers that bloom at this time of year. 

Thanks for visiting.

Love Your Stamps

Thought I'd post a stamped piece for Simon Says Stamp challenge this week.

http://www.simonsaysstampblog.com/mondaychallenge/

Here's a stamped card I recently made.

Owl and saying are from Hero Arts.

The background is made with assorted stamps. 

The branch is part of the Tim Holtz tree Sizzix die, I just cut off the top to make the branch.

Love this set-it is so much fun. I think that squirrel looks a little possessed but I love that about him too.

Thanks for visiting my post.

Getting into the Spirit

Made my first holiday card the other day.

Am trying to get into the holiday spirit- you know

change over from making fall things and moving into winter and Christmas.

I am definitely someone who needs to be in the "mood" to create something, and that is especially true for Christmas.

One thing I have been doing to motivate me is to listen to some music- the Pandora app on my phone has lots of oldies-the best- to jam to while I work for that squeezed in hour in the studio after work and before dinner.

Plus it been so COLD it feels like the dead of winter here in New Hampshire.

Katie (my daughter) has gotten me hooked on these love story movies on the Hallmark Channel. They are doing straight Christmas love stories lately. You know the outcome when you see the first 15 minutes and they always end happy. No academy award winners, but just plain relaxing fun. In small doses that is!!!

Oh my!!!! 

This card looks a little top heavy- but its actually the angle.  As you most likely know,

if you photograph a part closer, it looks bigger. (So that's why people hold fish they catch while fishing out in front of them when they take photos-so Mr. Fishy looks bigger-sometimes a lot bigger.) I looked down when taking this photo so the top looks bigger-and hence-out of proportion.

Stamps are Designs from Sheena. 

And before we get to Christmas we first have turkey day-

1 week!!!

Here's a card I put together for my daughter for that day.

Pilgrims from Hero Arts, words from Flourishes, and the turkey is a Quickutz die.

And inside I made this fun little pop-up using a Sizzix pop up.

Words and turkey here are from Hero Arts.

Not sure I like the blue background but it does make the colors pop.

Hope you enjoy my cards.

Thanks for stopping by

Useless Night

Don't know if was the time change, the cold temperatures, the new quarter at school, but last night I was useless.

A long nap, the tv, wanting to go to bed at about 7.

Oh no, I have slipped into hibernation mode.

And I wait all day to go play in the studio and then I got home and

didn't care whether I went in or not.

Watched some more of Game of Thrones though.

Is there such thing as a wasted night?

A couple of cards I made the other day-

neither ended up being very quick makes.

This kitty card has an oval cut out in the front so you get a little sneak peek of the inside.

I decorated it up with some doodling, dots, a die cut (cat from Frantic Stamper) and this little strip of scrap paper.

This was the inside-

which I fixed up the cup.

Stamped image is from Magenta.

You can see I changed up the cup  a bit.

Then I decided I didn't like the plain background.

A little dark.

So I did this.

Can you tell?

I painted the background lighter orange- makes it all pop more I think!

The hello is also a die cut.

And then I made this card-

The owl is a Cottage Cutz die cut made on plain black paper which I then glued down onto a white oval die cut. Then all that went down onto this rosy colored scalloped oval die cut. I colored in the owl with some Copics and I think he looks awful fun.

Finally I stamped the hoots-using this older Hero Arts alphabet set.

The letters for the word Hello are the inserts from the hello I used in the top card.

That's what I have for today.

Not too exciting but just me playing.

Playing is always a good thing I think.

Hope you get a lot of play in your day!

Are You?

So the question I beg to ask is are you perfect too?

This card is photographed way too much on an angle but oh well.  

That's what happens when its rainy and dark and you try to photograph under a light.

What a silly owl! I love him.

I die cut the circle for the moon and then I hand cut the branch out of some paper.

And this card, with brown distressing-needed a little more depth- and even a blop of glue that leaked out-

 is just perfect.

Sometimes I think what I make isn't good enough for anything, but sometimes I think it is ok.

More than ok.

Pretty good.

In my own style.

Messy,

slightly off,

never a straight line

I say just do what you do and make it look like you mean it.

Nothing I make looks like they came off a store shelf.

They are

ME!

Thanks for stopping by.

Belated Mother's Day

No I didn't forget Mother's Day but I never showed you this card I made for my mother-in-law. It is quite frilly for me but it is perfect for her- and I really like how it came out.

I started by inking my card stock with mango, green and brown ink.  I love these solid mini-butterflies that I then randomly stamped n the cardstock just to give it some interest. They are from a mini set by Hero Arts which I don't know if they even sell any more. I have lots of old stamps in my collection and I love using them. 

Then I added a scrap of old looking printed paper.

I am really happy with the pansies. I die cut the 3 of them with a Sizzix Sizzlets die. I used Distress watercolor markers to color them, and a white Uni-ball pen (the best white pens I think) to outline them. I also die cut the flourish corner (another Sizzix die) on white paper which I then randomly stamped and inked and used a brown marker to outline. The banner is a Paper Smooches die- I outlined it with a black marker and stamped the word (Hero Arts) in brown. Finally I die cut the little dragonfly from a set of mini's from CheeryLynn Designs.

And here is the pansy die from Sizzix I used.
And here is the set from Hero Arts with the mini-butterflies.

This photo makes the stamps look big but they are just peg sized stamps. I think this is one of my most used stamp sets.

Here's the die set from Cheery Lynn Designs I got the dragonfly from. It is great for these kinds of projects.

Thanks for stopping by!

Blooms, Blooms and Blooms

There are flowers popping out everywhere right now.
After the brown and white and grey of winter, it is so fantastic to see so much color.

As I mentioned the other day, I am especially excited because the lilacs are blooming.

And I love lilacs.

If only I could blog their smell!

These are just a little bit behind- spreads the color out a little bit longer!

Pretty soon my orange azalea will be bright with color- the buds are so big you can see the orange petals behind their thin leafy covering. They are  plump and about burst. And I'll have purple iris too since their buds look just about the same.

And then it will be lupine and perennial geranium too.

Never mind the rest of my garden blooms.

My gardens will be bright with color

and buzzing with bees!

Can't wait to show you when that happens!!!!

A couple of weeks ago I was in a card making mood. All these buds and blooms and greening up plants filling in the gardens inspired me, so  I pulled out my box of flower stamps and played.

I made the two cards above and  this one.

Products I used were the lilac stamp from Impression Obsession, the flower rectangle from Hero Arts, the 3 blooms right above us from Autumn Leaves. I also used sayings from Hero Arts, Flourishes Rubber Stamps and Penny Black. A little paper layering, a bit of die cutting and some embossing rounds off the techniques I used. In the middle card I used some color combinations that I don't usually play with.

I also like the white on white in this last card. Who'd think white on white could work so well- and it makes the colored flowers really pop.

Thanks for stopping by!

I'm Taking the Scenic Route

Not going any place to exotic today, but I am heading north to Waterville Valley, NH for a conference. Waterville Valley is one of New Hampshire's premier ski resorts, but I am not skiing. It should be pretty and scenic up in the mountains in an early spring kind of way,probably some snow still on the ground, some mud, bare trees...still it is a change of scenery and I haven't been to Waterville Valley in years. My husband's aunt and uncle used to have a condo here which we occasionally would use about this time of year for a cheap weekend away. Hopefully this environmental education conference will be good.

I made this card by stamping the cool Hero Arts worlds map background stamp. I colored the unit using Copics Markers and then inking the oceans by using a stipple brush to apply turquoise ink. The suitcase is another Hero Arts image that I colored and cut out. The other image is the saying which I believe is from Stamper's Anonymous. I added some October Afternoon rub ons above that.

Finally some Pima little metal embellishments and a Pima wooden airplane embellishment too.

Not the day yesterday was-though cloudy it was in the high sixties- oh so spring like and beautiful- and such a mother nature tease!

Have a great Wednesday.

Big Red Blooms

I need to take a bunch of photos of my recent art, but I did manage to get some photos of this spread, which I particularly like- in all ways- color, images, layout.

Here's how this started, as a couple of gelli prints in my journal.

Then it needed some Dylusion's spray ink and a Prima stencil.

Really like how this stencil works.

These words are an old set from Hero Arts. They are lots of fun. And the lizards- one of my most used all time favorite stamps from Magenta.

The red flowers are another favorite and often used stamp from Stampington. Although the image does not have polka dots when I stamped it it picked up some of the background stencils. Love that.

Cool colors and even a bit of paint texture too.

And it so springy-like the weather we've been having lately.

Finally.  Before it rains at the end of the week.

Hope it stays so I can see some big red blooms in my garden.

Thanks for visiting today.

Dreaming of Blue Skies and Warm Days, Green Grass and Flowers

Our snow is melting, BUT, not as fast as I want it to be. It has been a cold stubborn stretch since Frebruary, with too many snow events and temperatures sticking in the 30's too many days. Except for the longer days and brighter sunshine  and slightly warmer temperatures (I will take 40's), lots of days it feels more like February or January rather than March-late March. You know, lamb time, not lion time.

 I was looking at photos I took while out boating last summer, and it made me wish even more that the warm spring weather would arrive.

Here's one of those photos, changed just a bit using some Photoshop filters.

Oh this looks SOOOOOOO

NICE!!!!!

I have a few big plans for my summer coming up- but I'm not talking yet.

So with Easter this Sunday, thought I would share this card with you.

I started by stamping an oldie but goodie Hero Arts flower stamp several times along the bottom of a white card. I colored the flowers and then used a stippling brush and some aquamarine colored ink to color the background.

The grass is made using a Martha Stewart paper punch.

The cloud die cuts are from Die-Versions.

The bunny is from Paper Smooches, I cut him out and sprayed him with pink October Afternoon spray and then made the cotton tail white with a pen.

This is pretty cheery-

it suppose to be a nice day today and I am off on a field trip to the Boston Aquarium with my seniors.

Should be a good day to go back down into the city again.

I hope we have a lot more melt today.

I hope you do too if you are also in the snow like us.

See you again soon.

Blogger's Challenge

So this week's Blogger's Challenge is Cut it Out. So I did that by first die cutting the background and the bubblely frame for that. Both of those are Memory Box dies. The background die cut was done on plain white paper and then I colored it using box Dylusions spray ink and and some green ink on a Hero Arts polka dot stamp. 

The froggie is an image from Rubber Moon. He was stamped twice, once directly on the card and then once on white paper. I colored the one on the white paper and cut it out. When I did this I cut off the head. (Sounds gruesome!) I did that so I could glue the body flat and then use a foam pop up stickie so the head would be a bit higher than the rest of the body. I attached all of these into the uncolored stamped image directly on the card.

The flowers are also a Memory Box die- only I trimmed away a few flowers and added those after using some Distress stain to color them.

I trimmed down the outside of the card to mimic the shape of my background cut out. Then I added some Viva paint pen dots on the bubblely frame and also on the center of the flowers. Finally I added the little Hero Arts hello stamp.

Here's the die cuts I used.

And a close up of Mr. Froggy.!

Thanks for visiting!

Fun Food

I couldn't resist showing you these 2 cards with a loving and food theme.

More fun cards for the 21 year old at college.

I used this light pink card stock and some plaid orange paper that I embossed and then colored with an orange ink pad for this cheery donut card..

Donuts and saying are all from Hero Arts.

I used some bright Viva paint pens and also some Ranger Dimensional Pearls to make the decorations on top of the donuts pop a bit.

My other card uses a stamp set from Unity Stamps.  At least the pizza and the saying are from them. The bottom heart border is from Technique Tuesday and the top little hearts are from Memory Box-this ancient Valentine's clear set I have which is such a super set.

Ha-ha-both of these cards use these fun puns and put a smile on my face.

I'm sure the 21 year old smiled too.

They don't have to be fancy- I am sure 21 year olds don't care for all the frills-which I don't really do either to tell you the truth.

So yesterday I nursed my head cold at home, which meant doing some me things to make me feel really good about me. Feeling good about yourself is one way to get your spirits up which in my mind gets your immune system up and helps you knock the old virus villains in the snoozle.

Which I believe it did. Mostly- still dragging this morning but just tired, not sick feeling too.

I did a few small not too energy sucking chores about the house and I played in the studio and read more of Gone Girl and I watched more of Downton Abbey- I have made it into Season 3 now.

Everyone needs a day like this.

And today it is back to the work world of teenagers and biology and co-workers and commuting, but I am ready and prepared. Even with the tiny bit of light snow we got...but wait till Friday. Sounds like we have a lot of snow coming in the afternoon.

That means an icky commute home.

GRRRR.

Anyhow-

It is also Wednesday, already.

How did that happen?

Lots of Hearts

A little crooked-but another card made using a Gelli print. Love the colors on this one-with the pink and green peeking through.  I used some red ink and stamped some Technique Tuesday and Tim Holtz images onto the print.

I used red so they images would melt into the image and not stand out too much. But I did add they saying (Hero Arts) in black so that would catch your eye.

The big heart in the center of the image is part of the gelli print. I also added a pink die cut of a heart too. It is all about love today.

Then I used a Quickutz, Lifestyle Crafts die to cut the entire gelli print and added it to a white card stock base. Finally I added a few red Viva paint pen dots.

These gelli plate prints make a great card background.

So if you read my blog now and again you'll know I am a big fan of my college Alma mater hockey team. Finally the black bears had a home ice win yesterday!!!!!! We've had a few ties, and a lot of losses!!! Yeah- and we've moved to 8th place in hockey east- hope we can turn around for the next few weeks before the season ends.

Have a great day and

stop by soon.

Love when you do that!